Promise?
by DandyInABox
Summary: Clara Oswald experienced amazing adventures with her Doctor in the TARDIS, but one day, she was left behind without a single word. The way out of the hole of self-pity, self-hatred and depression seemed impossible... until one day, the familiar wheezing and screeching echoed through the streets near her home. [Just quite angsty Whoufflé, really.]
1. Return

_/ SUPER PROFESSIONAL FOREWORD: Hello, you kind, sweet __people! This is my first proper piece of fanfiction, so don't be too harsh to me with the reviewing and criticising, since I am bad at taking the kindest sort of criticism, anyway. Hope you have fun. It's a story I have been playing with in my little, weird head for a while now. Chapter #1 from 'I don't know how many', enjoy! /_

It had been years.

It had been three years since Clara last could admire the majestic and old, mysterious blue box whose mystery she had witnessed and experienced every Wednesday. One day, the Doctor had decided to leave her and fly off in his TARDIS, leaving the short brunette, Clara Oswald, behind, heartbroken and with nothing to hold on to in life. The ancient and big-chinned Time Lord had not even taken the time to say goodbye, 'Thank you' or simply hug Clara for all the times they had spent together. That was what the soufflé-girl, as he had always lovingly called her, had been cursing ever since the Doctor ran away without the slightest announcement or trace. The poor girl was still hurting, cursing the Doctor for just having left her behind like that, even though she, obviously... Loved him. She had had feelings for the floppy-haired Doctor since the pair met, every day that they had spent together contemplating whether to finally confess to him and tell him how she felt, or not. Clara had never been able to swallow down her fears of losing him and confess, pour her little, slightly scarred heart out to both his empty, big and partially dark two hearts.

After having survived countless emotional crises that led Clara to the use of self-injury, pill-abuse and too many sleepless nights every year for a 26 year old to handle, she found and caught herself again. The young woman, as she had always imagined it, followed a black yarn in the dark with no idea as of where it could lead her. That yarn led her back to life. She regained at least small and fragile crumbles of will to live again. Clara considered herself back on track, generally. Even though the Doctor crossed her mind every day, she felt like the emotional experiences and breakdowns had burnt out her young, broken heart, rendering it far too exhausted to shatter itself every day anew over the memories of the madman in a box. She might not have given up hope in life, but she had for sure stopped believing in her Doctor, who Clara, and she could not deny that, still had not gotten over romantically. Clara spent every of her calm and peaceful seconds to recall the cute and corny nicknames the Doctor had always called her, or the hugs and cuddles she had received from the Doctor every single time that she had been sad or down all day. Occasionally, Clara was on the brink of crying, which was a definite improvement if one considered the nights of sobbing all of her pillows wet and damp, the carving and slitting open of her arms or even the two times of the gorgeous, big-eyed brunette devastating her apartment to bits after having been pushed over the edge by the fondest memories, shouting and yelling for her Doctor to just come back to her and hold her, how lost she had felt without 'the wood-faced dickhead holding her'.

It was a mild and calm Friday morning when Clara eventually woke and let her chocolate-eyes flutter open with a groan. Another hard and exhausting day of work was waiting for her, but hey, at least it was Friday. Clara attempted to sit up, ending up just rolling off her bed with the elegance of Frankfurter sausage. The young woman really could not be bothered on the last day before the Christmas holidays. Tempted to let her slender, frail hand reach for her phone in intention to notify her employer that she was oh-so-sick and that she could not turn up to her job as the receptionist of UNIT, she lied on the soft, fluffy carpet, mumbling to herself in hope to be able to build up some courage.  
'Oh c'mon, Oswald.. S'only until two in the afternoon...'  
She encouraged herself and got up, stretching and extending every single one of her limbs, making sure not to stretch her rather well-formed and 'divine backside', as the Doctor had always complimented it, towards the window that was facing her neighbours' home. She hastily slipped off her jim-jams, struggled herself into her far too tight uniform, which at least did not show all too much cleavage, and traipsed downstairs, securing her uniform cap with her fingers. Clara never had breakfast or morning-TV. Not only because she skipped lots of meals due to her feeling of being too thick or 'a blob-fish', she had always enjoyed doing these things together with somebody. Somebody she liked and loved to spend time with. Her habits had changed severely since she had been left by the one-not-to-be-named-in-her-presence-but-still-is-mentioned-in-quite-every-hospital. No breakfast, no morning-TV, off to work, that meant. With a sigh, she had locked her house-door and left for work.

The bus that Clara had gotten on was full to its walls, the situation not really improving with the obnoxious infants yelling and whinging about as if the seats of the bus weren't creaking loudly enough. The gritting of her white, small teeth grew rougher as the noises in the bus became even more annoying and loud, the leaving of the bus at the stop she had desired feeling like bliss and a thousand heavens and hells of a release. The slightly tensed Clara entered the mundane and minimalistic looking building of UNIT, positioning herself behind the reception and starting to perform her task, with the most difficult thing about it constantly standing and not falling asleep on the spot, since not many ladies and gentlemen were keen on information from and about UNIT. Clara, basically, was spending her time at work being wolf-whistled by co-workers, batting away the feeling of fatigue and subtly shoving Skittles through her soft, cherry-scented lips.  
There was something that managed to burst her out of her tired and dreamy state, which was the alarm of the building that suddenly began to run wild and make every red-light and bell in the building throwing their tantrum consisting of 'RRRRRRRRRRING' and 'BOOOOO-BOOOOOP'. Leaves and folders could be seen fluttering through the room, the employees and their bosses panicking. Clara, and who would have expected that, was the first one to have left the building as the girl was obviously and understandably scared and fazed. An alarm like that one had never occurred in the building. It must have been serious. The whole building's interior was dominated by a red lighting for almost an hour, the sound of the many bells to be heard even far away from the building itself. People, inside and outside the building, were abruptly ripped out of their calmness.  
Clara was on her bus home, wanting nothing more at the moment than a decent and hot cuppa, soothing and calm seconds, minutes, hours under her cosiest of blankets on her even cosier bed. Her little fingers could be seen trembling on her thigh and knee as the bus took her home. Having arrived there, she wearily, with a pale and tired face, sipped at her tea, staring forward expressionlessly.

Clara wondered, wondered and wondered. Her mind took many turns in the worry-lane, a place where it had been spending most of its time in the past three years. She would have probably gone insane if it wasn't for her tea, the blankets and the music-channel in the background hosting a Beatles-special. The soufflé-girls chocolate-eyes were forced to leak a tear times twelve when the channel eventually decided to play 'Yesterday' by the Beatles. It was the song that she used to play to the Doctor on her guitar, making him amazed and baffled by her 'divine guitar skills', as he had often complimented it. The melancholy and the desire for that solitude, which felt like spoons of salt within Clara's now closed wounds, to end rose every second. She closed her eyes, causing the salty and thick tears to roll along her cuddly cheeks, as the lyrics felt like her very own story being told to her by a stranger. She might have been 26 on the outside, but she was, or had become, so helpless and little on the inside. Clara did not feel the need to slit her wrists open or throw slurs against herself, all she needed was a hug. Not the cuddle of her life-time, a snuggle or a shag. Just a hug. Arms keeping her safe, preferably his, the floppy-haired, bow-tie sporting and Tweed-wearing Time Lord's. Clara put her cup aside as it became too much for her to handle, quietly yet desperately weeping into her duvet as she felt lost, about to reach a dead-end. She just could not do without the edgy-faced idiot. As much as she was sure that he had never felt the same, that the feelings were not mutual, she knew that she needed him. The Doctor.  
Much to Clara's surprise and shock, she was very easy to startle that time around, the channel stopped playing the Beatles' iconic bliss of music. 'Blasphemy!', Clara thought, but 'Breaking news!', as stated on the TV-screen, were about to be revealed to the United Kingdom. Clara watched attentively. It could have had something to do with the abrupt alarm and noise at the UNIT building. The thought of that caused Clara to stare at the TV screen, gluing her big eyes of hazel to the screen.

_'Today, shortly before one o' clock in the afternoon, an emergency situation was triggered at the UNIT building in East London. According to the latest information, the cause of the building now being highly monitored and held under siege by various military forces is a one-eyed robot, moving like a tank and behaving highly hostile towards every life-form in sight. We ask every citizen to stay at home and lock the doors, also not go outside until the danger has been taken care of. Stay safe'_

The short brunette was shocked. Speechless. Her jaw having dropped and her eyes wide open with astonishment. Clara, as she had been advised, stayed at home, rocking and hugging her knees in fear, making up the worst of scenarios and thinking of the most terrible losses and things that could happen to her. She lost her appetite entirely, along with her nerves or enthusiasm to move. She was in a bitter state of paranoia. 'Somebody hold me...', she thought, the voice in her head not shutting up at all, which was driving her nuts. Hours later, hours of her holding her breath and trembling with fear, another newsflash came in. The night had already fallen upon the city of London and the streets were empty, lifeless. The place where Clara lived had been unusually quiet and silent for hours.

_'We can now assure and announce that the one-eyed robot had been taken care of. The mutant, shielded by its casing, could be identified as 'Dalek', spelt D-A-L-E-K. The information was provided by a man that arrived in a blu-...'_

The telly had lost the signal. The broadcast froze and eventually, the satellite dish seemed to fail. The Dalek 'had been taken care off'. But what was the reason for this sudden failure of the signal? It did not really improve Clara's state of paranoia and fear. What was most strange and scary was what could be heard from outside. An extraterrestrial kind of screeching and wheezing. Clara's eyes shot up at the familiar sound. Her curiosity and the sparks of hope floating around her heart overwhelmed her state of shock and made the brunette shuffle herself onto her feet to take a look out of the window. What her eyes caught on top of the grey, mundane skyscraper near her home made her question reality.

_/ TO BE CONTINUED. /_


	2. Reunion

Clara's eyelids could not even be seen anymore due to her shocked and tear-summoning stare, her fingers fiddling with each other insecurely as she just stood there and let the fog of doubt engulf her mind and soul. Eventually, the first tear dropped and flowed to rest beneath her eye, more tears were forced to follow and merge with the first one as Clara's eyes were tickled by the air. She stopped the watery and blurred sight of the world, as surreal as it seemed that moment anyway, with a wiping of her eyes with the back of her hands. The young woman got back to staring at what was on the rooftop of UNIT's main base. Something square and seemingly little. Well... That was what it seemed from that distance. Combining the sound of the wheezing and screeching that had been heard a little earlier and the box-like object on the roof, the possibility of HIS return did not seem so unlikely anymore. Had the Doctor come back to Clara? Would Clara at last reunite with the two-hearted man that could help her fight her demons and drag her out of the darkness that she had stumbled into?

The only way to find out was to stop the flabbergasted staring and push herself out of the state of shock that had followed the first. Clara scooped together her clothes that consisted of raincoat, boots with a fluffy and soft inner lining, everything necessary to keep herself warm since she would have to walk beneath a dark and grey sky that began to spill out rain en masse, making the world seem colder than it seemed through her eyes when tears occupied them. As she threw and shuffled on warm and snuggly clothes, she contemplated whether to be angry, loving or repellant, if it was really the Doctor having landed on that rooftop. Clara made sure that each light and electricity-eating object in her room was turned off, that the picture on the wall did not hang crookedly and that the curtains blocked the sight into her room. The steps that she made towards the exit of her room did not look all too confident, but it was noticeable that the former companion of the Time Lord, very familiar with running and dashing, was in a hurry, flooded by washed with the waters of haste and pressure. Or 'sweat', that would be an accurate term, too. She had almost entirely made her way to the house-door when she stopped to have another think about what she was about to start or end. The possibility that she was about to stumble out of her life of normality and averageness was high. She would, at least, not live in solitude any longer.

With a sigh and a frown, she closed the house-door behind herself and dared the first step onto the wet and partially muddy cobblestone. The sound of the raindrops clashing onto the ground defined what was happening within her mind, endless tirades and missiles of thoughts against herself, possible bad scenarios being everything that her mind consisted of. She tried to drown the voices in her head with soft humming as she made her way to the high building. She observed the soaked trees and road signs that she was walking past. Clara loved the rain. She loved seeing the world in this foggy tone of grey with its many objects, lamp posts, signs, windows having started to glisten under the rain. Clara found herself coming closer to the building. She could still see the square, tall object on its edge from her angle. It had been hard to see at first, but if Clara's eyes were healthy and sharp enough, dark and rather thick smoke could be seen emitting from the top of the box. The smoke blended in well with the darkness and greyness of the sky, but the roughly golden to silver light tracing it did not and therefore made the thick, dark emission visible. Clara stopped the dash-hurry-lazy-walking to admire the majestically looking emission in a state of mesmerisation. The sun was not shining at all and no spotlights could be seen nearby. She could just feel that she was getting closer. To what exactly, she did not know. She relied on her intuition and felt good that way. Having finally reached the entrance of the entirely evacuated UNIT-base, Clara realised that she was about to break the law as well, by entering restricted area that had been evacuated due to a Dalek-attack only hours ago. She opened the partially shattered doors of glass by their stylish wooden handles and hurried inside. It took her one step to break the law and she was ready to take many more to reach the roof. Clara rushed past the counter and with every step that she took, the pieces of marble that the floor used to be made up of cracked apart or let dust escape. The elevator had been out of order ever since the Dalek-incident. Of course. Clara could be bothered to pick the stairs for once and without a second thought, she dashed towards and up the stairs. She felt herself becoming more exhausted and breathing louder with each stair that she climbed, cursing herself for having neglected her fitness since the Doctor had left.

It had taken her a while to make it past half of the stairs. Clara's steps had become weary and slow, every inch that she moved bringing her closer to the brink of giving up and just drop dead on the spot that she had reached after all the stair-climbing, huffing and panting, but the young woman knew that she could not just give in to her fatigue like that. After a few steps more, Clara noticed that she literally was on the final spurt, the door that would lead her to the rooftop being in immediate vicinity and only a few steps away from her. The motivation that was lit up at that sight made these few steps possible and Clara almost collapsed against the door, her whole, not so heavy weight resting against it as she audibly panted and breathed against its fire-proof and raw surface. She unlocked the simply-constructed lock and opened the door in a rough swing. She was greeted by the cold breeze from outside, letting her skin and lungs experience a refreshing feeling after many minutes in a staircase poor of oxygen or air conditioning. All the air tickling her widely open eyes sure was not an all too pleasant feeling, but what she saw just forced a perplexed expression, eyebrows almost reaching the moon and her already big eyes of hazel open wide enough to provide an elephant a place to rest. It indeed was the old-fashioned, blue police box standing at the edge of the roof. Clara could tell that something had happened to it, but that did not change the fact that the TARDIS had returned. And where there was a TARDIS, there must have been its mad and floppy-haired pilot as well. Clara was about to make the revelation that would most probably make her heart skip a beat. Will the soufflé-girl and the Time Lord reunite? She came closer, treading hesitantly and letting her feet almost slide over the ground, both of her hands trembling more severely from the nervousness than from the cold. Her strands of hair fluttered behind her like leaves rode the wind after the hood of her raincoat slipped off her head, leaving her whole head and neck exposed to the cold temperature and the now few drops of rain. Inches away from the blue box, she raised her hand insecurely and her fingers took their time to spread far enough to be able to clench around the handle of the door again securely and firmly, the way she grabbed the doorhandle making it obvious that she was desperate for the TARDIS to stay on the spot and not dematerialise, along with the young woman's hopes. She proceeded to eventually tightening her grip on the handle and rip the door open to the inside in a swing, her big and with the anticipation tearful eyes falling shut. What soothed her was the noise that she had missed so much. The noise that even drowned the sound of the wind passing by, the raindrops on her clothes' noisy fabric and the voices in her head that had not left her alone for a while. It was the noise of the TARDIS, the whirring and humming of the control room, the column of the console moving up and down. She felt at peace and believed her worries and anxieties dead, at least for a few minutes.

"Hello."

A manly, somewhat quirky voice greeted. Clara flinched and swallowed thickly, clenching her fists. Sweat ran down the side of her face and she whimpered silently. She jumped over her last limit and let her eyes flutter open, a blurry sight at first, but a sight crystal-clear enough to confirm: It was him. He had returned. In one piece. The bow tie, the greasy and floppy hair, the majestic and long coat, transparent to no eyebrows at all, and the chin a bodybuilder could be struck to death with. The Doctor. Her Doctor. As he lived and breathed. Never had Clara cherished somebody's return and presence as much. Clara did not care about the possibility if he had run away from her because he had started to cultivate a despite towards his soufflé-girl. She needed him and she needed a hug, desperately and quickly. The Doctor had already agreed without any use of corny verbal sugar or honey. The slightly taller Time Lord opened his arms for her widely, as if he offered her a home. Clara sniffled and ran as if she ran for her dear life, into no other direction than into his arms where she had always felt most safe. The running from door to Doctor had felt like an eternity and now she finally got him where she had always wanted him. Her arms were tightly fastened around his waist and her face nuzzled into his chest, an inferno of tears no longer avoidable. She soaked the Doctor's shirt and waistcoat damp with her tears, not paying any attention at all to the words that he was whispering.

"Shhh, Clara.. Shhh, nah nah.. It's alrigh'." The Doctor mumbled close to her ear, closing his arms around her protectively and petting the small of her back.

Clara did not even manage to bring out the slightest word, only desperate and relieved gibberish that was far from being understandable or emotionless. After minutes of standing in the middle of the console room, holding each other and not moving an inch, Clara's weeping and crying faded into shy and intimidated whimpering and squeaking, followed by words formed by a broken and exhausted voice.

"T-Thought y'left me forever.." She sniffled.  
"You didn't really, did you.." The chinstrong Time Lord soothingly muttered with his cheek cuddled against her head.

/ TO BE CONTINUED. /


End file.
